steps

One of the therapy programs the doctor has me on is that every day I have to either go outside or go up or down the stairs.  This time of year, I usually choose outside because we are waiting for spring to come and for the shore birds to return to our pond and baby moose to be born - stuff like that.  Last week we went out and saw that the rhubarb is coming up in the garden and that the raspberry plants look like they survived the winter.

Upstairs in my house is 1000 square feet of studio - half craft room mostly for scrapbooking and the other half a giant sewing room.  Craft and sewing space I have dreamed of my entire adult life.  There are 10 steps and a landing between me and that craft utopia.  The stairs are beautiful spruce wood - sanded and lacquared, very beautiful.  There is even a landing halfway up for resting. 

The first few steps, I do great.  sometimes, I don't even use my cane, I just bound up them like a mountain sheep.   but then I get to the landing and for some reason, I can't get up on it.  I switch legs and switch sides of my cane, I try to find things to grab.  I always get stalled stepping onto the landing.  The dogs find this annoying because the landing is where they spend their afternoons - watching for the UPS guy and Brian to come home from work.  They just look at me, like move it or lose it lady - we want the landing back.

The other night I was studying the steps from my chair in the living room - there is a post between my view and some of the steps and I kept trying to measure them in my mind, picturing me bounding up and down them with ease.  And I noticed that a step was missing near the landing.  I thought the post was blocking my view so I moved from side to side, trying to get a view of that step.  Finally, I figured out, there isn't one.  Alicia looked over with me and she grabbed a measuring tape and this is what we found:  step one is 5 3/4 inches.  very manageable for someone with little tiny short legs like mine.  next four steps were 7 1/2 inches.  about the maximum that I can comfortably manage. last step to the landing is a tiny bit over 10 inches.  TEN INCHES !!  No wonder I struggle on that step every time.  The newell posts are cobbled onto the stair case, so they are no help to use as leverage.  We said bad words about the man that built our house.  If he had pulled the steps out a couple inches, there would have been room for that last step and all the risers would have been closer to 6 1/2 or 7 inches. 

Turn the landing to finish the climb - next step is 5 1/2 inches. 

I do this funny thing in my mind when I think I can't tackle something because of my physical condition.   I bemoan the fact that I have lost this or that ability...  like one day Brian came home and found me crying because i wasn't strong enough to turn the water on or off in the bathroom.  I was so sad that I had lost that ability.  Turned out the faucet had broken - he couldn't turn it either.   I was getting so weak getting out of my recliner that I had to get a lift chair and let Brian have the recliner.  Turned out, the recliner is a bugger to close - he and Alicia have to really kick it to get it to close.  I wasn't getting weaker, the chair was wearing out.  stuff like that.  you know.  I panic, I worry, I feel sorry for myself.  so we have had a bit of a laugh (after a while, you have to laugh) about the stairs now.  It wasn't me at all - it was an idiotic build.  Haven't figured out what to do about it yet, but at least now we know it wasn't psychological or physical.  I just have short legs and the step is very tall.